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Museum Of Fine Arts Boston Paper On Two Works

Museum of Fine Arts Boston Final Paper

Albert Bierstadt
Storm in the Mountains (1870)
Mid 19th Century American section
(J.P. and Mary B. Barger Gallery)

Joseph Stella
Old Brooklyn Bridge (1941)
Early 20th Century American section
(Lee Gallery)

Storm in the Mountains
Albert Bierstadt

Content Description:
The content of this work is as the title implies. This painting is of a storm in the mountains. It closely resembles a later work that is slightly more famous, by the same artist called "Storm in the Rockies." Both works are done from similar perspective and are of the same set of mountains. For this reason believe this piece is a narrative work, it is the first painting of a pair that shows the progression of a storm through the Rocky Mountains. At the bottom in the foreground, tress and bushes are blowing in the wind from left to right. Beyond these trees a flat and mostly open field stretches into the distance. On either said of this field steep mountains and rock faces sprout form the ground and rise up to the edges of the picture plane. At the top left corner a dark cloud looks as though it's moving across the sky. As it moves from left to right on the canvas it gets lighter and starts to move downward, and the white clouds engulf the top of the mountain on the right side of the picture plane. The lower portion of the mountain face on the right is drenched in a stream of yellow sunlight that is also traveling from left to right.

Storm in the Mountains is a work of the fine arts as it is purely nonfunctional. I would certainly consider it to be a naturalistic work but there is also a feeling that it might be idealized or in other words shown slightly more beautiful than it actually appeared to the artist at the time of viewing.

When and Where:
Storm in the Mountains was painted in about 1870 in a New York art studio. Albert Bierstadt was born in Germany and at two years old his family immigrated to America and settles in New...